Re: factorial function/phase out postfix operators?

On Mon, May 18, 2020 at 05:02:34PM +0200, Vik Fearing wrote:
> On 5/18/20 4:42 PM, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> > There have been occasional discussions about deprecating or phasing out
> > postfix operators, to make various things easier in the parser.
> > 
> > The first step would in any case be to provide alternatives for the
> > existing postfix operators.  There is currently one, namely the numeric
> > factorial operator "!".  A sensible alternative for that would be
> > providing a function factorial(numeric) -- and that already exists but
> > is not documented.  (Note that the operator is mapped to proname
> > "numeric_fac".  The function "factorial" maps to the same prosrc but is
> > otherwise independent of the operator.)
> > 
> > So I suggest that we add that function to the documentation.
> 
> I think this should be done regardless.
> 
> > (Some adjacent cleanup work might also be in order.  The test cases for
> > factorial are currently in int4.sql, but all the factorial functionality
> > was moved to numeric a long time ago.)
> > 
> > What are the thoughts about then marking the postfix operator deprecated
> > and eventually removing it?
> 
> I am greatly in favor of removing postfix operators as soon as possible.

Agreed.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             https://enterprisedb.com

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